Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about their rights and responsibilities, what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community. This will be taught through our Living and Learning sessions and also two focused weeks – Anti-bullying week (13 November) and Who do you think you are? (20 November).
Our full Living and Learning long term plan is now available on the health pages and you can keep up to date with our weekly Living and Learning statements on the parent noticeboard in the playground and also on the school calendar.
Our new school council
Congratulations to our new school councillors!
We had a record number of candidates this year and there were some very close votes but here are our winning candidates.
Their first meeting will be on Wednesday 08 November.
Well done to all children who prepared a speech. We hope they don’t feel too despondent and are resilient to have another go next time.
Final school council project
Back in July, our Year 5 and 6 school councillors attended the Leeds Youth Voice event at Leeds Civic Hall. They were very keen to share their experience back in school with the school council and also in a whole school assembly. The one idea they wanted to implement back at school was to have a friendship stop.
With the support of the rest of the school council, this is now in place!
This was a great project for the school council to work on as they came to the end of their time as school councillors. Representatives spoke to the whole school in assembly to explain how the friendship stop works.
Ask your child if they have seen the new sign and what they would do if they saw someone at the friendship stop.
Here is a note from Grace who was one of the school councillors that wanted to make this happen.
The friendship bus stop, which is new to our school, is a great chance to make new friends. It encourages people of all age groups to make sure that everyone has someone to play with. The bus stop is located above the bench closest to the entrance to the middle playground. We hope that this idea goes well and that every child uses this correctly. Your child should definitely know what the friendship stop is and how to use it in the right way because it has been discussed during our Friday assembly.
School Council elections
Our School Council elections will take place tomorrow, Thursday, 19 October. All children have the opportunity to vote at our polling station using the following instructions.
Before voting, please read the following:
- Vote once for one person.
- Place one X only on this ballot paper beside the name of the candidate you have chosen.
- Do not write or mark anything else on the ballot paper; if you do, your paper will be invalid and your vote will not be counted.
- When you have marked the ballot paper, fold the paper and place it in the box provided.
Votes will be counted tomorrow and our new School Council will be announced at the end of the day. This will be made up of two children from each class with the highest number of votes.
Good luck to all our candidates.
City of Leeds basketball
City of Leeds basketball club recently led a PE session for Year 5 and delivered our basketball after-school club in the summer term.
Here are details of their sessions available locally.
There is also a new girls-only session at Allerton High School on Monday evenings, 6pm – 7.30pm, ages 7 – 14 years. The first two sessions are free and then it is £5 pay to play.
Bonfire themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Friday 03 November. Please contact the office, before Wednesday 18 October, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
- Posh dogs in finger rolls or Vegetarian meatballs in finger rolls
- Curly fries
- BBQ baked beans
- Rocket lolly
- Fresh fruit and yogurt
School council elections
Our school council elections will take place next Thursday 19 October.
In an assembly this week, our current school councillors told us what characteristics are needed to be an effective school councillor.
These included:
- use all the 8 Rs for learning
- be respectful
- help others
- be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
- tell the truth
- be confident with your ideas
- accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
- be friendly and approachable
- make good choices in class and around school
Watch out for the whole school homework this week all about the election and democracy.
Allerton Grange PE
This afternoon, we made the short trip to Allerton Grange for our PE lesson. We were taught a range of sports by some Year 10 sports leaders. As always, we were fantastic ambassadors for our school and this was appreciated by the sports leaders and their teachers. Well done, Year 5!
Thanks to our class photographer for the afternoon: Farai.
Rugby
For the last four weeks, during our PE lessons, we’ve been learning all about rugby. Visitors from Leeds Beckett University and Roundhegians RUFC have taken over our PE lessons to teach us the skills needed to be rugby players. It was great fun and I know the children had a great time.
If your child is considering playing rugby outside of school, which I strongly encourage, there are a number of clubs in the local area. The closest to school is Roundhegians RUFC. Roundhegians are an established club that are well known in Yorkshire rugby for their thriving junior section. Training is on Sunday mornings and children of all abilities are welcome.
Exploring, and writing about, the Arctic!
Last week, we continued our Explorers topic by combining our topic and writing lessons.
In writing, we looked at some examples of reports and picked out the key features. Then, we discussed writing our own report about the Arctic (we’ll write this next week). We made a brief plan, splitting our report into four sections, and decided what we’d need to find out.
In our topic lessons, we began our research. First, we made notes about where the Arctic is and what it is (To be able to describe the physical features of an area). It was useful to practise our note taking and summary skills as we learnt all about the size, climate and physical make-up of the Arctic region.
In a different lesson, we read about two explorers who both claim to be the first person to explore the Arctic on foot (Who was the first person to explore the Arctic on foot?). We used our reading skills to find key information in each text, answered a range of questions and pretended to be roving reporters interviewing each person. We then had a debate about who we believed.
This week, we’ll continue our research by asking ‘What lives in the Arctic?’ and ‘What does the future hold for the Arctic region?’.